Texas Independents Sour on GOP Ahead of 2026 Midterms

When likening politics to football, one adage that often crops up is that the most important part of the game is played between the 40-yard lines.

In the literal football sense, that means whichever team dominates that 20-yard slice of midfield real estate will return to the locker room euphoric in victory, while the other will hit the showers in despair. In politics, it illustrates that the object is to corral that bloc of voters in the middle — the ones who don't simply default to one side or the other and likely hold both sides in roughly equal amounts of contempt.

And that brings us to the poll released Wednesday by the Texas Politics Project, a nonpartisan affiliate of the University of Texas. One key takeaway from the poll of 1,200 registered voters, conducted Oct. 10-20, about one year before voting begins in the 2026 midterms, is that most Texans are not happy with social and economic conditions and are not optimistic that things will improve soon.

President Donald J. Trump and Texas Governor Greg Abbott exit the room after attending a roundtable discussion at the Community Operations Center in Kerrville, Texas, on Friday, July 11, 2025. They met with first responders and local officials one week after a devastating flash flood that claimed over 100 lives.

The answers from respondents who align with one party or the other were predictable. Republicans, whose party is in charge both nationally and in Texas, feel a little bit better about the economy and are less concerned with political corruption than respondents overall. Democrats, out of power in Washington and historically out of power in Texas, are deeply troubled by those issues, and most of the others raised in the poll.

But what is driving the disaffection across the board are respondents who describe themselves as independents. Two-thirds of them said the national economy is worse than it was a year ago, and 57% said they personally are worse off than they were on the eve of the 2024 elections. When asked about specific elected officials in charge, the mood of independents was just as sour.

About Gov. Greg Abbott, 58% of independents said they disapproved of his job performance — a 19-point drop since February. For Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, the disapproval rating among independents was 52%, slightly better than Abbott’s, but Patrick’s number fell 27 points among independents in the past eight months.

Midterm elections are generally considered referendums on the sitting president, and the poll showed that independents have a dim view of how President Donald Trump is doing his job. His highest approval score among independents came for his handling of border security, with 33% saying they approved, but 50% said they disapproved. Even more — 58% — said they don't like his immigration policies.

On inflation and tax policy, Trump's disapproval numbers were 74% and 69%, respectively. And more than half of independents panned his push to redraw Texas' congressional district boundaries to give a boost to the GOP.

To return to the football-politics analogy, Texas Republicans have been able to dominate the territory between the 40-yard lines since the 1990s because independents have consistently broken their way in statewide elections. Stretching the analogy even further, Democrats haven't even been able to cross the 50-yard line during that time.

And, truth be told, Republicans can't take all of the credit for that. Even in years when they've had the wind at their backs, Democrats have offered up weak and underfunded candidates in key statewide races.

Recall the 2018 election — Trump's first midterm, which proved lousy for Republicans nationwide. But in Texas, Democrats put up former Dallas County Sheriff Lupe Valdez to go against Abbott. Valdez ran on her law enforcement bona fides, but that narrative fell apart after it was learned that her county-issued sidearm was not returned when she left office because it was missing. The gun ultimately resurfaced after months, but Abbott still sailed to a double-digit victory.

And 12 years before that, in another midterm that was teed up as a gimme for Democrats nationally, the Republican candidate for governor, Rick Perry, managed to get only 39% of the vote. But, sadly for the Democrats, their candidate could only cobble together 29.8% in a race that also featured two reasonably well-known and reasonably well-funded third-party candidates. Between the two of them, they outpolled Democratic former Congressman Chris Bell by just under 2 percentage points.

Perhaps Democrats this cycle see a change in fortune on the horizon, given the overall dismal mood of voters that appears to be driven by independents in the Texas Politics Project poll. It could happen. But there are a couple of data points that could prove problematic. First, only 13% of independents said they hold the Democratic Party in high esteem. And worse, just 31% of Texas Democrats gave their own party a favorable review.